Harris posts loss from write-off but still beats Wall Street forecast

Taking a big writeoff related to its TV broadcasting unit, which is being sold, Harris Corp. said Tuesday it absorbed a loss in its latest quarter, although sales increased and its overall results beat the Wall Street consensus forecast.

The Melbourne-based communications and electronics company incurred a loss of $255 million on sales of $1.48 billion in its fiscal third quarter that ended March 30. Sales increased 5 percent from the year-earlier quarter, when Harris earned $142 million.

It was the first full quarter with Harris' new Chief Executive Officer William M. Brown at the helm. He succeeded the retiring Howard L. Lance last November.

In his short tenure, Brown made some big moves, discontinuing Harris' venture in remote "cloud" computing and planning the sale of its underperforming Broadcast Communications business, which triggered a $407 million accounting writedown of assets in the latest quarter.

Absent the writeoff, Harris posted a profit of $159 million from continuing operations, an increase of 5.3 percent from the 2011 quarter. That translated to $1.39 per share, compared to $1.31 a share in the year-prior quarter.

Harris topped Wall Street's consensus earnings-per-share estimate of $1.31 per share on revenue of $1.47 billion, according to the quarterly Thomson Reuters survey.